The Taming of the Shrew

Theatre Details

This most controversial of Shakespearean comedies centres around the story of two bachelors, Lucentio and Petrucchio, who have travelled to Padua in search of love and learning.

Lucentio focusses his attentions on Bianca, the sweet-natured and gentle daughter of Baptista, a merchant, whilst Petrucchio (who seems from the start to be over fond of the bottle and its contents) is challenged to marry her wild and unbiddable sister (and she's certainly got a few behaviour problems) and vows to turn her, through kindness, into an agreeable and amenable wife.

All will be wed and all will be well or so it would seem.

I find it interesting that the original 16th century cast would have been entirely male and this show reverses that convention completely.

I did wonder how that would affect my interpretation of the plot as Marion Potts has produced this show, which examines the politics of marriage, for the Bell Shakespeare Company with an all female cast.

The production is said to raise the battle of the sexes to ridiculous heights and is reputed to be vibrant, energetic and packed with female punch.

This might be the perfect night out for anyone who has ever fallen in love and managed to survive it.

Well! I came away finding this play as confronting as ever and was relieved I knew the plot before I saw it... its complicated.

I had had to remind myself more than once, as this performance is in modern dress, that it was written about four hundred years ago and that social values and especially the status of women has changed quite a lot since then.

I would argue for the better.

I found once again the way in which Kate, the shrew of the title, is transformed into "sweet Kate and gentle Kate and never Kate the shrew" exceptionally confronting on more than one level and indeed the whole theme of the status of women in the play very difficult indeed for me -no property rights, no other legal rights, little choice of a partner, dependant on her father and then her husband, in status a chattel with a value dependant on the social position of her father or husband to whom she is at least in theory subservient.

The only free women were widows who inherited.

Before her marriage and subsequent submission to Petrucchio Kate appears free to behave as extremely as she wishes, in fact as freely and extremely as Petrucchio does during and after the wedding.

I'd wondered whether the all-female cast would skew my perception of the theme of the play, written as it originally was for an all-male cast but it didn't.

I did agree though with someone sitting near me, that the purely female vocal range diminished the difference between the sexes as did the frequent cross-dressing, if that's how you describe a woman playing a man dressing herself as a woman.

There were some amusing and ribald moments and the use of music from our time punctuated the performance as a reminder of the universality and timeless appeal of Shakespeare's theme but a couple of people around me found the set a bit big for the cast and other members of the audience told me they found the acoustics of the City Hall something of a challenge in such a fast-talking piece.

There were some interesting cameo portraits; I particularly liked those of Baptista, the father of the two sisters, and of Grumio, an aged pretender for Bianca, but this play is a comedy, and in the principal protagonists I think there is an element of caricature to make the writer's point.

However, from a full house, everyone to whom I spoke was generally very positive about this performance and was very clear this was a play that challenges our accepted contemporary values and social expectations.

This is not a play for anyone aged under sixteen or so and a cause for serious thought for anyone older.